Management consultancy r10 Consulting has appointed Hélène Stanway, who led modernisation projects for the Future at Lloyd’s programme, and Beazley’s former head of strategy and insight Paul Willoughby as strategic advisers, Insurance Insider can reveal.
Stanway and Willoughby will complete a new executive strategic advisory team at r10 that also includes CTO Chris Hendry and executive director John Taylor.
As companies in the global specialty market undergo transformation projects to digitalise processes, r10 said the team would play an integral part in strengthening its advisory capabilities.
Stanway has more than 25 years’ experience across emerging technologies, digital transformation, operations and data.
She spent 17 years at XL Catlin, where she held senior roles including global head of operations for specialty and chief of staff to the COO.
At Axa XL, she was VP, global head of technology innovation, before a spell at Lloyd’s as market engagement and adoption lead, and interim data lead for the Future at Lloyd’s programme.
Willoughby also brings more than 25 years’ insurance expertise across digital transformation and operations, as well as business strategy and planning.
He spent the past nine years at Beazley in senior roles, including head of strategy and insight for corporate development and head of digital ventures. Prior to this, he led market modernisation projects at Lloyd’s.
Amechi Peirce-Howe, founder and managing director at r10, said that, after working with Stanway and Willoughby over many years, their knowledge, experience and network would be invaluable to clients.
Explaining the rationale for joining, Stanway said: “We have all seen in the market that transformation programmes can be more or less successful, and r10 is about delivering success. It’s not just a talking shop, it’s about tangible delivery. They have the expertise for end-to-end digital transformation.”
Stanway and Willoughby will advise on a wide spectrum of operational areas.
This will include analytics models to help with loss ratios and the automation of data extraction but also helping insurers and brokers, as Willoughby said, on “picking the right suppliers, with the right technology, with the right culture and ambition to solve the right problems”.
Both emphasised the need for transformation projects to be led in a fashion that focuses on the people involved as much as the technology.
Willoughby said: “We’ve worked with a variety of digital transformation people, and they’re always focusing on the technology and the process, and don’t think about the people. We’ve both worked on large cultural education programmes around that.”
As well as the staff angle, Willoughby emphasised that the profitability yielded from transformation was a core focus among clients.
“A lot of the conversations are around automation efficiencies and using augmented data to write more profitable business,” he said. “But who has to figure out what to do with that data, and where to put it? That’s the challenge many insurers have got.
“You can have all the data in the world, but will it make a difference? And how does it fit into the process? Will it make the business more profitable? That’s where Helen and I can conduct experiments and build business cases for insurers.”
Lloyd’s background
In the spring of last year, during her time at Lloyd’s, Stanway led a pilot with Whitespace on the first iteration of the core data record (CDR), a pivotal element of the Blueprint Two reforms that provides the minimum data set required for digital processing.
She also led the work on the current consultation on the CDR, from which a final iteration will be put to the new Data Council for approval.
Stanway will have a role supporting the council as an engagement adviser, helping firms adapt to the new digital solutions being developed under Blueprint Two.
She added: “Everybody’s at a different starting point of adoption, and, clearly, the Word document cannot perpetuate forever.
“Part of the work I will be doing supporting [Data Council chair] Sheila Cameron is making sure everybody’s fully informed and understands the changes needed, and then driving different adoption pathways, so everyone can move forward with better data and digital solutions.”
Kirstin Duffield, CEO of Morning Data, will also be advising Cameron as technical SME adviser, initially providing technical assessment of the CDR.
This article was written by Marcel Le Gouais, as an exclusive interview at Insurance Insider **
